Just wondering-- pnp D&D?

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SunVenus

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Jul 29, 2019
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As the title states, I am just wondering how many people who are playing Minecraft are old school gamers from the pnp days? I realise this dates me, but I'm not afraid to show it (show it, show it...) I'm geeky and I know it!

Seriously: did anyone else play pnp D&D or any of the other classics like Top Secret, Call of Cthulu, et al? I stared playing pnp D&D back in the old boxed set days... you know, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I still play now with my cadre of geek-alike friends (a houseblend of AD&D 2e & 3e with some elements of 1e for the nostalgia). Apparently there is a "gamer geek gene"-- my son is also a pnp D&D gamer. I'm so proud. :-D

So let your geek flag fly & chime in!
 
Doesn't really date you to consider pen and paper D&D. Pen and Paper role-playing games are doing about the same in the world to this day. Plenty of fun games, new games, new editions and so on. Pathfinder is the big title these days that I play. Quite a good time to be had for everyone. :)

Not a good idea to just limit oneself to just a single form of gaming, better to experience the whole spectrum of games!
 
Fisrath said:
Doesn't really date you to consider pen and paper D&D. Pen and Paper role-playing games are doing about the same in the world to this day. Plenty of fun games, new games, new editions and so on. Pathfinder is the big title these days that I play. Quite a good time to be had for everyone. :)

Not a good idea to just limit oneself to just a single form of gaming, better to experience the whole spectrum of games!
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Agreed. I play so many differnt games, aside from the aforementioned D&D & of couse Minecraft-- I am also an avid Illuminati boxed set player, M:TG, Wow, DDO, poker (IRL) and am about to get into The Secret World. I even like things like comedy improv party games and all sorts of puzzles, ice hockey, basketball-- all of this is good for mind & body!
 
I haven't played DnD since highschool, but it is a lot of fun. My goal was always to see what I could get away with: chucking small party members at enemies while retreating, using my psion to phase through the shop walls after hours, robbing quest givers, trying to turn my psion into a god by implanting my personality into everyone in a town one-by-one (then edit the implanted personality to worship me since it is a recent memory and let them "convince" others to join the cause in a good ole geometric growth curve).

Most of my character deaths can be attributed to an annoyed GM.
 
Nope. I am too young to have seen that time. This thread did remind me of xcompwiz's stream today where he was doing coding so that he could get random spells, since he is the DM for the group he plays with. Looked quite interesting.
 
Still play pen and paper games. Things like Pathfinder now are the big names, though D&D is still around. Shadowrun is quite a lot of fun as well.
 
I miss the AD&D fun that I had while growing up. Back when we didn't have awesome graphics to tell us how things looked or multiple choice options on what to do next in the adventure. We had to use this crazy thing called imagination (hard core stuff) :grin: .

Most of the players that I played with have moved around the world over the years. We have tried many different long distance campaigns, but its not the same. DDO was fun for a littel bit, but again not quite the same as those all night D&D nights with people huddled over a table trying to figure out a crazy contraption/mystery that the GM had thought up for us that week.

I still have a large box full of all the AD&D 2e books and most of the 3e. I did have a full set of the 1e, but they have been lost in time and were quite well used.

I think that some of the greatest adventure maps that will/have come out in Minecraft will/have been made by the PnP gamer types. I haven't heard much of xcomp outside of the mystcraft stuff, but listening to him talk about ideas for it, I can see him coming up with some crazy lore/adventures for an adventure map. Would be lots of fun.
 
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Gewitters said:
I miss the AD&D fun that I had while growing up. Back when we didn't have awesome graphics to tell us how things looked or multiple choice options on what to do next in the adventure. We had to use this crazy thing called imagination (hard core stuff) :grin: .

Most of the players that I played with have moved around the world over the years. We have tried many different long distance campaigns, but its not the same. DDO was fun for a littel bit, but again not quite the same as those all night D&D nights with people huddled over a table trying to figure out a crazy contraption/mystery that the GM had thought up for us that week.

I still have a large box full of all the AD&D 2e books and most of the 3e. I did have a full set of the 1e, but they have been lost in time and were quite well used.

I think that some of the greatest adventure maps that will/have come out in Minecraft will/have been made by the PnP gamer types. I haven't heard much of xcomp outside of the mystcraft stuff, but listening to him talk about ideas for it, I can see him coming up with some crazy lore/adventures for an adventure map. Would be lots of fun.
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Your post made me smile-- it mirrors so much of my many decades in pnp gaming (and other forms of gaming as well). I moved from the US to Australia many years ago and had to search out a whole new gaming group. It was rough-- I don't like to play with powergamers or those who abuse min-maxing, and with some of the younger folks, imagination seemed to be scarce as the bulk of thier gaming experience was with video games and thus they sometimes couldn't get out of a linear thought mode. But those were only a couple of people, and they fell by the wayside (or learned to use the great gift of imagination).

Now I have a good core group here and it is growing as we teach new people in "old school" style. I too have boxes of old D&D books, from boxed sets in the "chit" days (pre-polyhedreal dice) to 4th edition. *Thinks back for a moment* Yeah, I began playing before polyhedral dice. Wow, I am old. And when (shortly after I began playing) the polyhedral dice were introduced, I got really hooked--loved the dice, still do. And the 4-sided baddies make great impromptu caltrops! Lulz!

But imagination-- that is key. I've found that as amazing as games & movies can be nowadays, there is often nothing so impacting on me as what my bizarre mind can conjure up. Here's a silly example-- the movie "The Blair Witch Project". Nothing was shown of the thing that was stalking those dopes in the woods, but my imagination filled in and made it really personally horrifying. I could see in my mind's eye what freaks me out most, and it probably differs from what freaks others out. That's another beauty of imagination-- done right, veiled ideas in pnp games can make a general image (for example) like an Umber Hulk much more visceral for a player with a good imagination.

I'll stop rambling. TL;DR: imagination good! ;-)
 
Gewitters said:
I have one of those "impromptu caltrops" sitting on my desk actually. :)
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Cool! I have to keep mine boxed up; I still tend to drop them, lose them and then find them in the dark by treading on them... or worse yet, sitting on them when they fall on my big, puffy easy chair I use at my computer desk. Ouch!
 
Dice do have a hobbit habit of wondering about where ever they might please. Glad to see so many folks reminiscing about a very enjoyable game. I've been trying to come up with ideas for a Pathfinder RPG that uses a lot of older AD&D mechanics. Something that needs more of a Ref to adjudicate things then a storyteller dragging everyone along by the nose. Plus on like hex grids or no grids at all.. Something that can involve a good amount of NPC hireling and role more towards war game at higher levels rather then anime style zaniness.
 
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Fisrath said:
Dice do have a hobbit habit of wondering about where ever they might please. Glad to see so many folks reminiscing about a very enjoyable game. I've been trying to come up with ideas for a Pathfinder RPG that uses a lot of older AD&D mechanics. Something that needs more of a Ref to adjudicate things then a storyteller dragging everyone along by the nose. Plus on like hex grids or no grids at all.. Something that can involve a good amount of NPC hireling and role more towards war game at higher levels rather then anime style zaniness.
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Lulz-- Hobbit! You are on a roll with the puns!

You posted earlier about Shadowrun-- I am so dying to play it. Sadly, my attempts to convince my gaming group have failed ths far, but I'm nothing if not persistant. ;-) I plan on bringing it up again mid-December when we are all free of work & classes and suffering from gaming withdrawal.
 
Shadowrun is quite a lot of fun, plays a bit different from Dungeons and Dragons style games as you start off very compitent in what your doing and can be quite powerful right away. Still it's a blast and the setting is very enjoyable.
 
Fisrath said:
Shadowrun is quite a lot of fun, plays a bit different from Dungeons and Dragons style games as you start off very compitent in what your doing and can be quite powerful right away. Still it's a blast and the setting is very enjoyable.
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It really looks fun! Makes me think of William Gibson's works-- have you read any of his fiction? It's brilliant! I really like Virtual Light, and the short story Skinner's Room.
 
I've been trying to find time to read Neuromancer finally. Been slacking off on book reading due to homework/minecraft/etc. Should really try to find a girlfriend too now that I think about it. Huh.

Oh well. Yeah, know of the author but haven't gotten to enjoy anything they wrote unless it was randomly in a Hugo book.
 
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Fisrath said:
I've been trying to find time to read Neuromancer finally. Been slacking off on book reading due to homework/minecraft/etc. Should really try to find a girlfriend too now that I think about it. Huh.

Oh well. Yeah, know of the author but haven't gotten to enjoy anything they wrote unless it was randomly in a Hugo book.
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Argh-- school! I'm in the same boat. My "reading for fun" time is almost nil the further I have to go with my research. Worse yet, when I actually go to Turkey to begin my field research, I likely will have to curtail my game time... and I need that game time! Keeps me sane! :-)

Ah Hugo's... have you read any Heinlein? He won heaps of Hugos, even "retro Hugos". He is my favourite author of all time.
 
I have not played in a very long time, even to the point that I sold of the collection of books and box sets I had collected over ~10 years. I still remember the day when I finally crossed the last items (Deck of Priest spells and the great Khan game) off the list to complete the collection. I did give 3rd edition a try once, and thought the D20 system was nice but still missed the days of THACO, unpainted miniatures, and the sunrises lighting the way back to bed.
 
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